


Much More Than This

by metonymy



Category: Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon, Road Trips, Travel, Yuletide Treat, fantasy geography, slight reference to sexual content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 03:03:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5480882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metonymy/pseuds/metonymy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adventure in the great wide somewhere is so much better when there's someone to share it with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Much More Than This

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Who Shot AR (akerwis)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/akerwis/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, AR! I saw your prompt and was thoroughly delighted, as I've often had the same thought myself, so writing this was a total joy. <3

When the dust had settled - when the cake had all been eaten down to the last crumb, and the guests departed with smiles and well-wishes, and Maurice had ridden Philippe down the newly smooth path to the village - Belle turned to her Beast and said, "What now?"

"I don't know," he said, and drew her in close, his hands large and warm against the small of her back even through layers of whalebone and cotton and brocade. "But I have a few ideas."

She laughed and drew him down for a kiss, still marveling at the smoothness of his cheeks where she had expected fur, and said no more of the matter for a while. 

But later, much later, as she lay with her head on his broad chest and luxuriated in the feeling of his fingers combing through her hair, Adam asked, "What did you mean, 'what now'?"

"I meant - is this what we do? Host grand parties and then pass time in between them? What do you do all day as a prince?" As a princess, she meant. She hoped it wasn't embroidery. She'd never been good at that.

"I don't know," he said, after a long and thoughtful pause. "I wasn't exactly a very good ruler, and things seem to have gotten along well enough without me while… while I was… well." Belle patted his side, to encourage him to go on, and he cleared his throat with a gruff rumble. "You're not bored of me already, are you?"

"Oh, no, dear Beast," she said, propping an elbow on his chest so she could see his face, then scooting up beside him when he grunted. "I could never be bored of you. I just don't know what I'm going to do with myself." It wasn't that she longed to return to the life as her father's assistant and caretaker and housekeeper and errand girl and. But she couldn't see herself passing her days in idleness, either. 

He looked up at her with wide blue eyes, curling her hair about one finger. "Neither do I," he confessed. "I was… I was trapped for so long, and now… now I can't decide what to do first." 

Belle traced a fingertip over his chest, her mind sparking with ideas. "You _were_ trapped. But you aren't any longer."

He let go of her hair to catch her hand. "And?"

"And… you're a prince. You could go anywhere. _We_ could go anywhere."

His mouth curved into a smile, gentler and smaller and considerably less frightening than it used to be. "We could. Is that what you want, Belle?"

"You have no idea how much," she assured him, leaning over for another kiss. 

 

They went to Lutècia first, because it was closest, and because it had the reputation of being the greatest and grandest city in the world. And its nearness, Belle thought privately, meant they could go home far sooner in case anything went wrong. After all, Adam had not left his castle or his lands in ten years' time. But other than writing an occasional letter to Cogsworth on their journey, seeking reassurance that all remained well at home, her Beast seemed just as excited as she did. 

And when they came over a rise and saw the city spread out beneath them, sprawling out across the banks of the river, both of them gasped. Perhaps it wasn't exactly proper for a princess to be leaning out a carriage window in this manner. But the prince was doing the same thing on his side. 

"Have you ever been before, my Belle?" he asked, drawing his head back in. Belle nodded, nearly overbalancing, then sat back inside. 

"Once, for one of Papa's inventions. He presented it to a comte." Belle could still remember the stink of the machine oil and the mess it made in the drawing room and the expression on the face of the snooty nobleman. "It didn't go well."

Adam chuckled and reached for her hand, still so much smaller than his own. "Then you will have to be my guide."

"I was twelve," she pointed out. "We may get lost."

"Then we'll get lost together." 

They did get lost, and gloriously. Both of them preferred wearing plainer clothes to royal finery, and with a purse carefully tucked away they simply looked like any other well-to-do young couple. They roamed the city's streets for hours, ducking into churches and gazing at the stained glass windows, wandering through markets and buying fresh-baked brioche for a snack, and - of course - poking through every last bookshop in the city. 

"Isn't your library enough?" Adam asked her once, as she knelt in front of a shelf. 

"It's wonderful," she said absently. "But there are new books printed every day!"

"Maybe I should look into adding another wing," he grumbled. Belle poked his leg, then went back to scanning the titles.

But the best day of all was when they went to the grand museum. Belle was interested, of course, as much for the stories the paintings and sculptures told as for the beauty of their forms. But Adam… she had never seen the light in his eyes like this. Except perhaps when he'd looked at her after his transformation. His fingers would twitch as if he were going to reach out and trace the curve of a marble arm or a bronze foot. He spent long minutes staring at a portrait of a young girl at a window, light seeming to spill from the canvas. He was entranced by the painting of nymphs surrounding a goddess, tilting his head this way and that, murmuring softly to himself. He was more fascinating to her than the works of art.

When they crossed into one room and he stopped short, Belle wondered if he'd seen something that reminded him of his former form - a painting of a hunt, perhaps, or a sculpted lion from ancient times. But no, it was merely a student, sitting on a folding stool with a pad of paper and a stub of charcoal in his hand, copying the shapes and movements of the painting he had chosen to observe. It couldn't be the fact of another person that had her Beast stopped like a deer in a hunter's sights. 

She looked up at his face, saw the light of… jealousy? And suddenly it all made sense. 

"You were an artist," she whispered. That was why the curse had so transformed the castle, why he had destroyed his portrait with such violence - perhaps he had painted it himself. Adam looked down at her with a helpless shrug.

"My… paws weren't made to hold a brush," he admitted, voice so quiet that she nearly missed the words. Belle took his hand and wove her fingers through his, bringing it up to kiss his knuckles. 

"Not anymore," she promised. 

When they left Lutècia, it was with a small easel and more kinds of paper and paint and charcoal and pencils than Belle had even known existed. 

They headed south next, crossing into Hispalia. The language here was different, the vowels rounder and smoother than their own, close enough to trip them up. Belle studied a dictionary and a phrasebook and did her best to teach herself, and made friends with every chambermaid and innkeeper's wife along the way to try and learn the language. But it was worth it to be able to order their dinner, even haltingly, the spices new and unfamiliar. The olives were delicious, the cider served instead of beer sparkling on her tongue, the ham cut into gauze-thin slices that seemed to melt into nothing. One inn served them a hearty stew made of beans and three kinds of pork and Adam almost had to carry Belle back to their room. In the mornings they had cups of hot chocolate and coffee so strong it made her mouth twist, though Adam tossed back the tiny cups and nearly roared with delight. The trip would have been worth it just to see him so delighted, she thought.

They took twice as long on their journey as they might have, because there was no purpose or ending other than the journey itself. They stopped in small villages for a few days to look around, exploring ancient ruins and the hollows of castles from kings long-dead. Adam spent happy hours perched on a rock with his easel and paints while Belle sat in the shade of a tree and read or practiced her new words or wrote letters home. They asked in every inn if there was anything worth seeing thereabouts, and every farmer and shopkeeper had a different answer. They were scrupulously kind to every aged crone they saw on the roads, and many an old woman found her purse heavier in their passing. There was one incident with a band of brigands, but when Adam leapt from the carriage and tore a man off his horse the thieves disappeared with a quickness. 

They passed from the mountains through the gentle, vine-bearing hills and onto the flat, broad plains. Belle found herself growing ever easier with the language, though Adam still fumbled with the simplest phrases and made do with smiles, gestures, and heavy coins. They came to the capital and strolled down the broad streets arm-in-arm, marveling at the performers who dressed and painted themselves like statues and moved only for a coin dropped in their hats. He didn't care for those, too similar to the enchanted objects that had haunted his home, but the Beast was easily calmed these days and they walked onwards. For dinner they ate fresh greens and tiny partridges baked in clay pots, and sipped glasses of liqueur with a strange herbal flavour. And Adam continued to make his art, paintings of the sky over their rooms and quick portraits of the men in the marketplace and a series of sketches of Belle that made her blush. 

"What if someone should see them?" she said, burying her face against his shoulder when she'd finally caught a glimpse of his latest study. Her bare arms, her back, the curve of her - well. "Surely getting to see me every day is enough, my Beast."

"Ah, Belle, how can I resist such loveliness? You're prettier than any sunrise could be." He caught her hand and kissed the palm, and she shivered. "Besides, think of it. Some future historian might find them and wonder what woman of years long gone was so ravishing."

"Ravishing?" She tweaked his ear and he tumbled her to the bed, and all of his sketches from that day were well and truly ruined. 

When they found themselves falling into a routine, they headed south again. The plain rose into hills and then to mountains, and then the mountains dropped sharply away and the sea rose up before them. Belle and Adam left the carriage and stood at the side of the road, gazing down at the water stretching out to an inky blue line on the horizon where it met the sky, the sun glittering like millions of diamonds on the water's surface. She reached for his hand and he folded it within his own. 

"Have you ever seen the sea before?" she asked. He shook his head, his tawny mane of hair flying about in the breeze. 

"Have you?"

"No." Belle tried to think of words to describe it, the vocabulary tumbling through her mind like leaves falling from a tree in a storm, but nothing seemed to measure up to it. The size, the sheer scope, was maddening and amazing. The scent of salt on the breeze made her lips tingle. She'd dreamed of adventure, of exploring the world, of new places and new people and new worlds to discover. But she'd never dreamed of someone by her side to see it all with her. "Would you like to see what's on the other side?"

His fingers tightened around hers. "I think I would," he rumbled, and together they stepped onto the path and walked down toward the shore.


End file.
